The Canal, 2001, Oil on canvas, 40 x 72 in. |
Full Circle December 2001 - January 2002 Curator: Nathan Harpaz |
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The Canal, 2001, Oil on canvas, 40 x 72 in. |
Full Circle December 2001 - January 2002 Curator: Nathan Harpaz |
| A certain wistfulness comes
with knowing the sublime landscapes Didier Nolet paints so convincingly
do not exist in nature. Figments of remembrance and dream, their verdant
meadows and wooded hillsides issue, instead, from the painter’s imagination.
They cannot be visited, except on his canvases. Yet, they are not entirely
fictions.
Each of Nolet’s paintings is actually a commingling of different impressions gleaned from various places and times in the artist’s life. Images of whitewashed cottages with red tile rooftops, for instance, are certainly rooted in Nolet’s recollections of his childhood in France. More often, however, the origin of a particular image-whether it be a farm field raked by morning sunlight, a shady grove or a range of misty blue mountains-is not clear, even to the artist. Over the years, all have become seamlessly interwoven into the whole fabric of his art. This exhibition of paintings by Didier Nolet, presented at the William A. Koehnline Gallery at Oakton Community College, brings together an impressive selection of canvases by one of the most distinctive landscape artists working today. But it is also something more. For the painter, who returned to Chicago this fall after five years in Phoenix, Arizona, it is a welcome homecoming, because it is here, where he lived and worked for 16 years, that his art came into its own. Garrett Holg |
Looking North, 1999, Oil on Canvas, 60 x 84 in. |
 44 x 64 in. |
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